Generative AI in healthcare as a driver of economic growth in the UK (July 2025)

Summary

The UK stands at a crossroads, where technological innovation, healthcare transformation, and economic renewal converge, forcing the nation to make decisive choices about its future path. As the UK navigates modest economic growth and a healthcare system under profound pressure, Generative AI has emerged not merely as a technological advancement but as a strategic catalyst capable of addressing pressing national imperatives.

This report was commissioned by Healthcare UK and identified five strategic imperatives to position the UK as a global leader in healthcare AI and drive meaningful economic growth.

Content

1. Establish the UK as the global leader in healthcare AI Make the UK the first port-of-call for safe, effective Generative AI by establishing a premier evidence-generation hub, implementing a focused model development strategy, strengthening a national conformity-assessment hub, running adaptive, risk-based regulatory sandboxes, and projecting UK standards internationally so innovators can take a product from proof-of-concept to global market.
2. Turn UK health data into a strategic growth engine Convert the health service’s comprehensive longitudinal data into an economic asset by creating a sovereign healthcare data resource, simplifying secure access, cultivating a domestic synthetic-data industry, offering incentives for UK-based development, and building the energy and compute infrastructure that keeps workloads on-shore and sustainable
3. Secure public trust through transparency, co-production and patient empowerment Put citizens at the centre by engaging the public early and often, ensuring transparent, accountable benefit-sharing and data-use reporting, handing patients meaningful control over their data, and embedding co-production in every Generative AI project—demonstrating that economic growth and responsible use go hand-in-hand.
4. Unlock capital and new commercial models for scale-up Fuel adoption through a UK Health Data Sovereign Wealth Fund, extending fit-for purpose funding pathways, fixing market fragmentation that hampers deployment, bridging healthcare, academia and industry, and piloting sustainable payment models that reward real-world outcomes
5. Develop world-class healthcare AI workforce and leadership Equip the system to implement Generative AI safely by modernising healthcare education, professionalising the data workforce, enhancing digital leadership, strengthening procurement expertise, and rolling out streamlined implementation frameworks that let frontline teams adopt proven tools quickly and responsibly.